Alphard Black
'Alphard Rigel Black '(11 Jul 1929 - 28 Aug 1977) was a pureblood wizard, the son of Pollux Black and his wife Irma, the brother of Walburga and Cygnus IV. Alphard was diagnosed with haemophilia at the age of one and a half after suffering a bad fall. He was a member of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black. He was the middle child of Pollux Black and Irma Crabbe, and grew up in the family manor in Tisbury, Wiltshire, England. In his adulthood, he took on a project of housing restoration. He renovated one of the Black family's more derelict properties, (a small lightkeeper's cottage) located on a small island off the Isle of Skye. He lived there until his health failed him in 1976, at which point he moved back into Black Manor, the home in which his parents lived in Tisbury, Wiltshire. He died in St. Mungo's, aged 48. Biography Early life (1929-1959) By 1960, the life expectancy of a person with severe hemophilia had risen to just under 20 years old. In the Wizarding World, however, by 1930, this life expectancy was estimated to be extremely low, and rare; in 1930, there had been just ten recorded cases so far in the 20th century, half of which were in wizards with most or all wizarding blood. Wizards were more inclined to listen to muggle research, as they became quite concerned that a muggle disease could be possibly ravaging the wizarding world. Alphard suffered heavily as a young child before Healers at St. Mungo's tried a form of plasma transfusion common to muggles, with the development of the Blood Replenishing Potion in 1931. The Blood Replenishing Potion was given to Alphard with an IV line, and he endured transfusions every other day in the east parlour of Black Manor. However, this was not ideal because patients needed a large amount of blood for the treatment to be successful. Wizards had not yet developed any system for the donation of blood, which the Blood Replenishing Potion is based from. When Alphard was eleven years old, he received his Hogwarts letter. His father initially forbade him to go, despite the fact that Alphard regularly performed accidental magic and to prevent him from doing so would do more harm than good. They worked out an agreement with the school in that Alphard would attend, but the school's hospital wing must be readily equipped to handle his problems. Alphard was sorted into Slytherin House on 1 September, 1940. He shared a dorm with his second cousin and future brother-in-law, Orion Black, Reuben McKinnon, and a distant cousin, Bartemius Crouch. The others failed to understand his health issues at first, and he was teased mercilessly by others in his year, but Orion quickly stepped up and prevented those in Slytherin from doing so. For the first few years, Alphard stuck close to Orion as well as Reuben McKinnon. When Alphard was a third-year, the Chamber of Secrets wad opened by Tom Riddle, which resulted in the petrification of four muggle-borns, and the death of a Ravenclaw student in Alphard's year, Myrtle Warren. Another student in Alphard's year was framed for her death, Rubeus Hagrid, as well as an illegal acromantula he'd been hiding in the school. His cousin, Orion, was made Prefect in their fifth year by Headmaster Dippet. In his childhood, he was often lonely and in severe pain, and his brother and sister were very close to him as a result, for they felt pity as they could do nothing to save him. However, their relationship began to fall apart in adulthood. Alphard had been sorted into Slytherin at Hogwarts, but was limited from reaching his full potential due to his disease. His parents never put much faith in him and as a result, Alphard began to later resent them, placing distance between himself and his family. Alphard decided to limit his field of study in his seventh year at Hogwarts, becoming a potioneer. He graduated Hogwarts in June of 1948. He worked tirelessly to achieve his mastery in August of 1959. This was shortly before his nephew, Sirius, was born. Later life (1959-1977) In 1963, Alphard's brother, Cygnus, and his sister-in-law, Druella, attempted to duel each other to the death. It was not known what caused the duel. Alphard's nieces, Andromeda, then eleven, and Narcissa, aged eight, bore witness to the duel which left Druella in hospital for a week. They separated after that, citing irreconcilable differences. Druella left all three of her children behind and did not even demand to see them, leaving Cygnus in the custody of his three daughters. Narcissa, eight, was heartbroken. Andromeda, eleven, was thankful, but relieved, and Bellatrix, twelve, had no idea what had happened and came home for Christmas to find their mother gone and their father sulking in his room. Bellatrix was always Druella's favourite, and it was no secret that she was devastated. She became prone to throwing insane tantrums and demanding that she go live with her mother, who would teach her dark magic, but even Druella didn't want to see her and Bellatrix could not understand why her mother had abandoned her. During these years, Alphard worked tirelessly on a cure for his haemophilia, but had been steadily growing more ill. Desperate, he ventured into the muggle world in his fourth year of research. By 1963, his nephew Sirius was almost five and he had a second nephew, Regulus, who was born in 1961, who was barely two years of age. He threw himself into his work when his sister's youngest son, Regulus, was also diagnosed with haemophilia, progressing at a voracity that no wizard had ever seen before. At Christmas, 1966, Alphard invited Sirius, seven, and Regulus, five, to his island to stay in his cottage in Skye, where there was a terrible storm and Orion and Walburga returned without speaking to each other. There had seemed to be an incident on the island where Walburga endangered Sirius's life because she didn't know what she was doing. The waters and tides around the Isle of Skye have the tendency to expose dangerous mudflats, in which one could simply walk from one smaller island to the mainland, but it carried risks. Walburga had attempted to walk across the flats with Sirius, for reasons unknown, and Orion had gone out to look for her, but could not find them. Alphard had to fish all three of them out from the mudflats with his boat. He developed a form of factor that, with a muggle team's help, would help other wizards that inherited the disease by 1968. By this time, Alphard was thirty-eight, about eighteen years above the life expectancy for those with haemophilia. His contributions to St. Mungo's Hospital progressed research faster than wizards could realise. By the 1970s, freeze-dried powder formulas of factor VIII and IX were readily available, which meant haemophiliacs were able to self-administer the factor in their own homes. For those with severe forms of the disease, like Alphard himself, and his nephew, Regulus, that meant that their health improved dramatically; before then, Alphard had been relying on the Blood Replenishing Potion that simply topped up his blood levels, and it did not help to clot his remaining blood at all, as it only did this when received in extremely large quantities. The introduction of Factor VIII was monumental because much less of it could be used to stop bleeds, and they would have less as a whole. As a result of his contributions, Alphard received quite a bit of gold for his discovery. He also improved his nephew, Regulus's quality of life, as he took factor that lessened the chance of bleeds. By 1972, when Regulus began his schooling at Hogwarts, Alphard was forty-three, which was shocking, considering the implications that a diagnosis provided. His race against time in his intense research allowed him to live past the age of forty-five, but it was around this time when his luck ran out. Sometime in the early 1970s, Walburga had stopped talking to Alphard so often, and this only worsened as they grew older; Walburga did not like the idea of putting factor in her young son's veins, because it had been engineered by muggles. However, Orion had been a longtime friend of Alphard's and would have done anything for his younger son, so Walburga was overruled. Alphard grew close to both Regulus and Sirius during their time at school, but perhaps the knife in the door was Walburga's disownment of Sirius, when he was sixteen. In 1976, Sirius ran away from home, and Walburga burned her son off the family tapestry. The family was not to speak to him and they were supposed to act as if he were dead. But Alphard refused, and encouraged Regulus to follow suit in secret, as Alphard's argument with Walburga had put a permanent wedge between Alphard, Orion, and Walburga. That same year, in 1976, Alphard's health worsened, and he had to move out of his cottage. He despised doing so, but he moved into Black Manor in Tisbury, where his brother lived, so that he didn't have to make the trip to London by floo from Skye. Using the floo aggravated his illness. Decline and death (1977) Alphard began to have bleeds that were worse than ever before, and at a constant rate, too. One particularly bad one left him in hospital at St. Mungo's in August of 1977. It is not yet known whether Alphard managed to develop an inhibitor of some kind that prevented the factor from doing its work, as we know now. He died the evening of the 28th of August with both of his nephews by his side, at the age of 48. Post-mortem In his will, he left a "decent amount of gold" to his nephew Sirius Black, who was seventeen at the time. He was posthumously disowned and removed from the Black family tree tapestry by his sister Walburga, and Sirius believed that this act of charity towards him was the reason why. Regulus had even continued to speak to Sirius until 1979, unbeknownst to their mother, when Regulus realised that the Dark Lord had made a Horcrux and disappeared. Burial Alphard Black was laid to rest on the grounds of Blackmere House, otherwise known as the Summer House, located in the west of Cornwall, where his aging parents lived at the time. He was buried outside the gates of Blackmere Cemetery, perhaps reflecting his disowned status. His gravestone read, "Alphard Rigel (11 Jul. 1929 - 28 Aug. 1977), an unfortunate but good man." Personality and traits Alphard had been capable of providing Regulus and Sirius with the love they never received from his own sister. Alphard was a somewhat fatherly figure to Regulus, who struggled with managing his disease until the end of his life, too, in 1979. However, Alphard's capability of managing his haemophilia led him to live longer than anyone had ever expected to. His relentless contributions to St. Mungo's Research prolonged the wizarding life expectancy from just under twenty to about fifty in just ten short years. Judging from Alphard's action of helping Sirius when he ran away from home, it can be deduced that he was capable of love and fondness. It can therefore be inferred that he might have been kind and compassionate in his life, which made Alphard vastly different from his sister. He did not seem to fear being blasted off the tapestry, thus indicating that, like his nephew, he himself had a rebellious or brave bone. Etymology Like many members of the Black family, Alphard is named after a star. Alphard is the brightest star in the constellation Hydra, and is known as the heart of the serpent. Its name is derived from the Arabic فرد|الفرد (Al Fard), meaning "the solitary one". Category:Characters Category:20th century individuals Category:Willow wands Category:Dragon heartstring cores Category:House of Black Category:Pure-bloods Category:St. Mungo's patients Category:Potioneers Category:Unmarried individuals Category:Slytherins Category:Individuals Sorted in 1940 Category:Haemophilia Category:1920s births Category:1970s deaths Category:Individuals from Wiltshire Category:Cancers Category:House of Greengrass descendants Category:Descendants of House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha Category:House of Crabbe descendants Category:Death by Haemophilia Category:Individuals from the Isle of Skye Category:Descendants of Salazar Slytherin Category:Grey-eyed individuals Category:Blackmere Cemetery